YMMV / Nanashi no Game

• Anti-Climax Boss: In Me, the final instance of Red Akane is terrifyingly hard to evade... unless you strafe. Keep on sidestepping for victory!
• Awesome Music:
  • The guitar riffing audio track when the protagonist is being chased by Riko. Sure, you are running for your life... but you have to admit the song is catchy.
  • The golden ending's music from the original game. It's an orchestral version of the 8-bit RPG song.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The Stinger of the Golden Ending of the original game. You get a final e-mail from Asahi with a short message: "Thank you.", meaning that the protagonist helped her to forgive and reconcile with her father, and that she is finally resting in peace.
  • The sole fact that Ushio Ikuta, the game's creator, named the game "Road to Sunrise", after his daughter (Asahi), whose name loosely translates to "sunrise".
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The TS is definitely a Bland-Name Product for the Nintendo DS, it acts similarly to a mini-computer or cell phone that sends messages and e-mails, and it also sends and receives transmission signals, probably based on the DS Download Play feature. But it was until the Nintendo 3DS that Nintendo's portable consoles would allow data exchange between players in a certain rank of close proximity through StreetPass, and that they would also receive data from other wireless network nodes through SpotPass.
  • The cursed RPG's song was eventually rearranged for Final Fantasy XIV, and it appears in the "Before Meteor" mini-album soundtrack as "Siren Song". The sound director of the game, Masayoshi Soken, worked in Nanashi no Game as its music composer (credited as "Luis Noma"). Since the original song is clearly inspired in Dragon Quest's "Unknown World Map", it finally comes into a cycle when it's used for another Real Life RPG franchise such as Final Fantasy.
  • At the time of release, the game was passed over by Square Enix's localization team on the basis that focus groups complained that "you can't shoot". Clearly they didn't predict the likes of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Alien: Isolation, Outlast, and many survival horror games without any form of combat that have spread throughout digital game store today. Not to mention that the DS platform became something of a haven for visual novels localized to English like the Ace Attorney series, Ghost Trick and Hotel Dusk: Room 215, and fellow Japanese publisher Konami approved Silent Hill: Shattered Memories made by the British-based Climax Studio, which is notable for being the first game in the series in which the protagonist is incapable of fighting back.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • Whatever is inside Odaka's toilet doesn't look normal. One has to wonder what it really is, though the original game's protagonist remarks that Odaka could have at least flushed it... and in Me, it moves (which is even worse, since it implies that no one cleaned that after a year from the incident in the first game). However, it is very unclear what it is due to the DS' graphic limitations.
  • Mercy General Hospital as a whole. The place was closed due to rumors of illegal practices, and it becomes evident as deeper as you go, that this was indeed the case. There's lots of blood on operational rooms' beds and inside a maternity room. There's even a room that looks like it was a torture chamber, and then, there are "secret" rooms that look like they were not originally meant to be "morgues".
    • It gets 10 times worse until you explore it again in Me, with the walls and floor completely covered in fresh blood. Sure, it's an illusion, but the sound that comes from your shoes is similar to the one you do when you are walking on wet floor.
• Nightmare Retardant: There are some elements and objects from the original game that makes you question if they are supposed to be terrifying due to the graphic limitations of the Nintendo DS.
  • The water looks green and has a jelly-like texture, and the blood doesn't look as such (the blood red-shred-advertising from Nanto Express Line Subway's Car 4, at its best, looks like paper decoration for birthday parties).
  • Fortunately, the sequel has an increase on its graphic quality, but it still offers some stuff and textures that would have been rendered so much better (like whatever is in Odaka's bathroom).
• Scrappy Mechanic: Running is completely useless in the "real world". Its control is wonky, and it's noticeable when the character is forced to run from fast Regrets, when they have to react quick as well. How useless? Well, compared when the protagonist needs to run from Riko or Ohyama, it looks like they do a brisk walk when normal ghosts are behind them. At least, this gets improved in the sequel, where the Regrets are much more aggressive than the first ones, and the controls' movements respond better.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: At first, the RPG's music sounds very familiar, if just a bit... off. Then it descends into ear-piercing noise.
• Vocal Minority: The North American focus groups who complained that "you couldn't shoot anything" were a huge factor in the decision to not localize the game. Which is demonstrably not detrimental to success in the market, considering the success of Western-made Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (which is approved by fellow big name Konami, no less!) and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, since you don't shoot anything in these games, either...
• The Woobie: Poor Mr. Ikuta. All he wanted was to create a game dedicated to his family. His daughter, Asahi, hates him for spending so much time on it, and he ends up losing his wife and daughter. When you investigate the old Ikuta residence, you discover a disheveled white-haired Mr. Ikuta huddled in the closet in a catatonic state, clutching his daughter's diary.
• Woolseyism: The fan translation team took some liberties to what to do on certain parts of the game.
  • Two of Odaka's neighbors' names in the Japanese version, are "Barker" (probably referring to Clive Barker) and "Kurasaka" (Kiichirou Kurasaka^note A Japanese horror author who is very prolific but also a little obscure. He has also done some Japanese translations, including the complete works of H. P. Lovecraft). They are replaced in the fan translation patch by the names of more recognized horror series' creators in the West.
  • When you see the cursed game's ending sequence, the credits suddenly stop and the first characters of the on-screen names turn red, which spells out "I won't forgive you". In the fan translation patch, this is changed so the words "YOU DIE" are formed by taking letters from "Yutani", "sound", and "director".

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